Dagoca Blog

Dear Reader,

The adventure has begun. I can't say I slept much (I think there will be a price to pay at the end of the day). The day started at 3:20 am Hungarian time (2:20 am English time, yes I found that out when I arrived in England).

After checking in your luggage and passing through security, you only had to wait a short time for your flight. Airline of choice: Ryanair. Destination station: Broadstairs. Flight was fine ( low cost still uncomfortable ). Upon disembarking the plane, I was surprised to find that they don't take people to the central terminal by bus, but by metro, which runs every 5 minutes. Arriving at the terminal (as UK is not a member of the EU) I just missed passport control because the automatic gate refused to accept my passport. So off to the manual police check (just what I was afraid of). Luckily they only asked me where I was from. That was done, off to get my suitcase. Between 10 desks I got what I needed. Unfortunately, I noticed here that one of the wheels of my suitcase was missing somewhere, I had three left, but it was not the most comfortable to come with it. After leaving the airport, I asked one of the security people which way to go if I was looking for this bus (I had bought this bus ticket in advance). He told me in very nice English. I found the bus station and then the bus came to take me to London Stratford station. On arriving at the station I saw a plaza, which I guessed I wanted to go to for lunch. It didn't work out (being a coronation celebration and Sunday, not much was open). There were a few sandwiches and some fast food. I stuck with the sandwich.

I walked through the plaza to the international station, where my train to Broadstairs departed. I had not bought a train ticket in advance. At first I wanted to buy it from a ticket machine, but it didn't want what I wanted, so I ended up buying it at the ticket office. I was surprised to find that I bought 10 GDP less from the ticket office than from the ticket machine. When I got to the platform, it said that the train was being dismantled, but I didn't understand how. It was still a mystery at the time. Meanwhile a train passed by at such a speed that I didn't know what to think it was.

Here is a little demonstration:

For me, I found out later, I came with one of these wonders, just different colour. On the way, I checked with Waze how fast it could go, and it managed to do 220 km/h. It was really very punctual, fast and they kept me informed about everything on the train with an information screen. It was a bit dirty and crowded, but that's about it. Let's just say Hungarian railways are nowhere to be compared to this.

After my arrival:

When I arrived, I had only a short walk to do (it would have been nice to have a flawless suitcase). On arriving at the house, they welcomed me warmly as they went about their usual lives (mowing the lawn, tidying the garden, cleaning, etc.).

I was happy to be here and finally reassured that this was no longer a state of mind but a reality.

I rested a bit and then decided that as tired as I was I wanted to go for a walk by the sea. It was really nice. Part of it was walking off the excitement of the trip, and part of it was seeing what a beautiful place I'd come to. (Plus: I've got where I'm going to be running for the next month. )

Finally, some pictures from my day: LINK

FAN FACT, what an event like this would be like in our area:

Dagoca